1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an endoscope device, particularly, to an endoscope device that is capable of automatically controlling a relationship between a front end surface of an endoscope and a subject such that the relationship has a state in which the measurement is performed with appropriate accuracy.
2. Description of Related Art
In the related art, an endoscope device has been widely used in the industrial field and the medical field. The endoscope device includes: an endoscope insertion portion that is inserted into an observation target, an imaging unit provided at a front end of the insertion portion that captures an image of the inside of the observation target, and a monitor on which the image is displayed, and thereby a user observes the image such that it is possible to examine the inside of the observation target.
In addition, among the endoscope devices, there is an endoscope device having a measurement function such that it is possible to measure the size or the like of a scratch, a defect, or the like on a mechanical component. In such an endoscope device, when a user designates measurement points on an endoscopic image, measurement values related to the designated one point or two points, for example, a distance from the front end of the endoscope insertion portion to one point, a distance between two points, or the like is calculated and obtained. In such an endoscope device, in order to obtain accurate measurement results, a subject and a monitor surface (front end surface of the endoscope insertion portion) have to be set to have a state in which the measurement is performed with appropriate accuracy. More specifically, a bending manipulation is performed such that a surface of the subject which has a scratch, a defect, or the like and the front end surface of the endoscope insertion portion are parallel to each other, and thereby it is possible to measure the size of a scratch or a defect with accuracy.
Therefore, JP-A-2009-14711 discloses an endoscope device that is capable of notifying a user of an inclination of a subject in a depth direction of an image in real time. The endoscope device uses the size of a mark of an arrow in a leftward-rightward direction that indicates the inclination of the subject in the depth direction of the image. For example, in a case where a mark on the left side of the arrow is displayed to be larger than a mark on the right side, the user can know that the mark side on the left side is the front side (close), and the mark side on the right side is the rear side (away).
In this manner, the user can recognize the inclination of the subject in the depth direction of the image, and can perform a bending manipulation for setting the subject and the monitor surface to a state in which the measurement is performed with high accuracy.
However, in the endoscope device of the related art, in order to actually set the subject and the monitor surface to a state in which the measurement is performed with appropriate accuracy, the user needs to manually operate the bending manipulation, and thus remarkable time and effort is required and it is highly difficult to perform the operation.
An object of the present invention is to provide an endoscope device that is capable of automatically controlling a relationship between a subject and a front end surface of an endoscope insertion portion such that the relationship is in a state in which the measurement is performed with appropriate accuracy, based on a plurality of items of object distance information.